Everything is in the question: we’ve all heard, during the pandemic, or at other times, of planes flying without any passenger to keep their slots and bet on future purchases of plane tickets to remain competitive. If many people decided to all of a sudden stop flying, what would it change in terms of the number of planes taking off? Would it be an effective solution to reduce the impact of the travel/flying industry? Thanks in advance!
EDIT: thanks a lot for all your answers and examples, this is very interesting, you’re the best! <3
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You said it yourself, planes during the lockdown where operating at loss, betting that once the pandemic was over people would fly again and they’d need the airport slots.
If many people stopped flying completely, planes would initially travel empty to keep the slots, but over time the companies would realise the passengers won’t come back to fly again and renounce those slots and reduce the number of planes.
The assumption during the pandemic was that the lower passenger counts were _temporary_. Airlines were willing to operate at a loss in order to keep their operations the same because they believed (correctly) that people would return to flying shortly after the pandemic was over. Reducing then rebuilding operations was calculated to be more expensive than just continuing to operate as normal in the short term.
If they believed the drop would be permanent, they would not maintain operations at the current scale. They would reduce the number of flights offered and scale back their operations to accommodate the new normal of passenger load.
By way of analogy, if your boss tells you that this month, your paycheck is going to be 50% of what you expected, you aren’t going to sell your home or your car – you are going to dip into savings to ride out the month of lower income. However, if he tells you that _every_ paycheck is going to be 50% lower, you’ll make lifestyle changes.
A lot of these empty flights is conducted with smaller airplanes. Depending on the terms of the slots they might also fly fewer departures then the slots provide them. In any case the empty planes use significantly less fuel. Most slots are also not so competitive that it makes sense to fly them empty to keep them. So if people stopped buying airplane tickets you would see a significant reduction in airplane departures, and a more significant reduction in fuel usage.
The long term impacts would be greater. With fewer people traveling there would be less reason to add new departures. So the airline industry would not grow as much. And even the existing departures can be cut down as they are no longer profitable. Why should they maintain a slot which they would not make profits on anyway? So the less people fly the fewer departures you get.
If you look at what Qantas did in Australia they didnt actually fly the slots just would (sometimes) not maket them amd cancel them at very late notice and still qualify as using them.
It would, eventually, people grossly underestimate the hourly cost of flying a commercial jet. It is like…$21000 an hour to operate a Boeing 737 Max. Occasionally flying a nearly empty airplane works out provided *on average* you have butts in the seats over the course of a year or more.
along with the other comments that outline the fact that the pandemic was a novel set of circumstances for the Airline industry it’s also important to note that flying empty flights to maintain slots is worth it at some airports but not at others
large international hubs like Heathrow, Paris CDG, Amsterdam Schipol and Berlin command incredibly high fees for slots so losing them would be massive, but a less important regional or more seasonal airports where slots are cheaper don’t require this
usually airlines also won’t fly a full route, to maintain a slot at heathrow you could just fly to a local regional airport and back in somewhere like Wales to keep hold of a slot that you used to fly to New York
Short term, no. It wouldn’t do anything.
However, airlines are going to quickly notice that they have a ton of planes taking up fuel and maintenance time and not producing any revenue in return.
Like you said, airlines are making a bet on future purchases. But if those future purchases don’t happen, airlines are going to stop making that bet.
Another reason for flying empty is to preserve pilot qualifications. Pilots are required to fly a certain amount of time each year to maintain their qualifications.
Passenger planes move cargo. Always have.
I used to work for a business that would occasionally use a service from Delta that would do same-day delivery of small packages via passenger aircraft.
I have heard (but cannot verify or source) that for some airlines, the passenger business is break-even and the profit is on the cargo.
Another factor: the vast majority of airports in the world are Level 1 or Level 2, and not especially slot constrained or controlled.
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